Chapter Sixteen
There are degrees of silence. They range from the comfortable, companionable types, to the opposite end of things—to silences that hide things that need to be said, that should be said and aren’t.
Brian looked across the room at Hayden, and knew that since the funeral, theirs had been the latter.
He had so much he wanted to say, but her deep silence was a wall he didn’t know how to breach. Once, they could understand each other with just a look. Now, what words they did manage were incomprehensible. They said very little and it meant even less.
The day after the funeral he’d thanked her for all she’d done for his mother.
She’d looked wounded, and without response walked away.
He’d tried to stop her, but she’d ignored him.
Here, they sat in the same room, next to each other, but not quite touching. That had been the way of things for them. Close, but not touching. And Brian wanted to touch her, to feel her … to have her feel him.
“Hayden.”
She looked up, but simply sighed and said, “Please, not now, Bri.” Her voice was heavy with exhaustion and sadness.
He wasn’t sure what she thought he was going to say, but he was pretty certain it would come out wrong, so he gave up. “Okay.”
He picked up his paper.
It was easier to hide behind it than confront the fact that he was losing his wife, and he didn’t know why.
Two weeks.
It had been two weeks since Kathleen had died.
Hayden stood in what once had been an office, then became Kathleen’s room. Now, it was just an empty space.
Hospice had come and taken their equipment away, and all that was left in the room were the personal items Kathleen had brought in to hopefully make it feel homey.
Hayden had never asked Kathleen if it had worked.
And now she never could.
All the things she should have said and didn’t clicked like a catalog of items in her mind. She worried that she hadn’t thanked Kathleen enough, that though she’d told her that she loved her, Kathleen hadn’t understood how much. Kathleen had been her mother, her friend, her teacher, her mentor, her biggest cheerleader …
How could you be sure someone understood that they impacted your life on so many levels?
“Hayden?” Brian was standing in the doorway.
It bothered her that her inclination was to say, not again.
Brian had spent the days since Kathleen’s passing hovering. Watching Hayden. She wasn’t sure what he was watching for, but the questioning looks, the furrowed brow … it was all making her decidedly uncomfortable.
“Yes?” She tried to force a smile, but didn’t think it was all that convincing.
He took a step into the room, barely over the threshold. “I got a call from the Realtor. They have an offer on our house.”
She’d forgotten all about their house being on the market. They’d only moved the bare essentials over from the house two doors down. They’d thought Kathleen’s illness would move more slowly, that they’d all have longer. It had moved too fast, and things Hayden had thought would be done by now weren’t. “That’s good, I guess.”
“We’ll have to go through both houses and decide what we’re keeping, how we’re going to combine both households into one.”
“Yes, I suppose we will.”
She leaned back against the window sill, almost sitting on the wide ledge, and looked at the former office, trying to imagine it as anything but Kathleen’s. They would probably use it for an office again.
Hayden tried to picture her desk in here, along with her computer and some books lining the walls, but she couldn’t quite manage it. All she could see was the hospital bed and Kathleen’s ill body.
“It’s a good offer,” Brian said.
Hayden nodded, not knowing what to say.
“We’ll have enough to pay off the mortgage we took on Mom’s.”
“Okay.” Forcing herself to be practical, she tried to feign some interest. “How long do we have to clean everything out?”
“A month easy by the time they get everything ready and set a closing date.”
“A month.” She nodded. “That’s doable.”
“We can decide what we’re keeping, then do a big house sale there, getting rid of whatever we’re not bringing here.”
“That makes sense.”
It did make sense, and it was good news, but Hayden couldn’t feel any sense of anticipation. Couldn’t imagine this house being anything but Kathleen’s.
Try as she might, she couldn’t imagine living here with Brian as husband and wife. She knew that was ridiculous, that they’d both lived here as children, that this had always been home. But without Kathleen, it didn’t feel like it anymore.
She realized Brian was still standing there in the doorway, looking at her. “Hayden, talk to me.”
“About what, Bri?” She got up and started pacing, feeling caged, though she didn’t know why. Truth is, she didn’t know much of anything right now. “Just what is it you want from me? I sure as hell don’t know. I’ve done everything I was supposed to. And now I’m lost.”
“Hayden, I’m just as lost as you.”
“I guess in the past, if one of us was sinking, the other was there to pull us up. But we’re both sinking this time. So, who’s going to rescue us?”
He didn’t have an answer, but then, neither did she.
“Let’s give each other more time.” She hoped that this would one day feel like home, despite the fact Kathleen was gone. And she hoped, given enough time, she’d figure out how to repair the relationship between her and Brian.
He said, “I feel as if every passing minute we drift further and further apart. Maybe we’ll be so far apart we won’t be able to get back to each other?”
“If that’s the case, maybe we shouldn’t be together.”
She heard herself say the words and wished she could suck them back in. Brian looked as if she’d struck him and she knew she’d hurt him. She hadn’t meant to.
“Is that how you really feel?” His voice was soft and almost vacant.
She wanted to close the distance that separated them, him in the doorway, her opposite, next to the window. But she didn’t, and he didn’t. All she could do was say, “I don’t know how I feel. I’m numb.” That at least was the truth.
“You wouldn’t have said it if you didn’t mean it on some level.”
“Maybe I do. Is that what you want to hear? Maybe we made a mistake when we married. Maybe I still think that you did it because it was convenient. Your marriage to Lisa had broken up. You’d moved home. It was easy to be with me, because we share a daughter, because we both loved Kathleen.”
She’d never put the feelings into words before, but as they tumbled out, she realized there was a truth to them all. It would be easy to blame the distance between herself and Brian on Kathleen’s death, but that was just an excuse. Maybe the distance had been there since the beginning? Despite the fact they’d had ten good years, maybe on some level she’d held a part of herself back from Brian, afraid to give him everything because she needed to protect some piece of herself for the inevitable day he left her.
“Maybe, Brian, I wonder if now that Kathleen’s gone and Livie’s a junior and graduating next year, then going to college, what we’ll have left? Maybe I’m wondering just what will hold us together?”
She waited, hoping Brian would say something about their love being enough to hold them together. Needing him to say that she’d never been just a convenience.
But he didn’t say anything. He merely walked out of the room.
Hayden, wanting to go after him, but unsure what to say if she did, sank to the floor and cried.
Livie was almost grown, almost ready to start a life on her own. She’d lost Kathleen, and now it looked as if Hayden might lose Brian.
What would she be without them?
2004
“What would I be without you? Lost, always searching …”
Livie continued, flawlessly going through her lines for the school play, Hayden reading the other parts.
As her daughter finished, sounds of applause startled them both. Kathleen and Brian were standing in the doorway, clapping.
“Oh, gee,” Livie moaned, ducking her head into a couch pillow.
“Come on,” Hayden coaxed. “If you can’t do the lines in front of the three of us, how on earth are you going to manage in front of the whole school?”
“I don’t know. I’ll probably forget every word, trip and stumble and make a huge fool of myself,” Livie announced.
“Was I this dramatic at fourteen?” Hayden asked Kathleen.
“You were worse,” Brian assured her.
“How do you know? You were away at school.”
“I heard things.”
Hayden looked at Kathleen, who laughed. “Not from me, I swear.”
She looked questioningly at Brian. “Hey, I’m not going to give up informants. I just know that you were more dramatic than Liv has ever managed.”
“Lies, all lies,” Hayden told Livie. “I was the soul of easygoingness.”
As they bickered back and forth, Hayden laughed, and finally asked, “What would I do without all of you?”
“You’d fade away,” Livie said with effect.
Hayden had laughed. “Oh, no. I’d probably get daily massages and a new car every year. I’d only watch PBS and …” She continued to tease them with more and more outrageous plans, but deep inside she knew Livie was right—without them, she’d just fade away.
Brian was right, too—she was as dramatic as Livie, she laughed for no reason except it was silly to imagine her life without them. They were a family and nothing could ever take that away.
That night a few years ago had seemed like nothing overly important at the time. Hayden had just been studying lines with Livie. But now, looking back, she wished she’d paid more attention. She tried to remember what they’d done after Brian and Kathleen had come in on their rehearsal.
Had they gone out to dinner? Maybe gone into the kitchen and all worked together cooking?
Tacos? Maybe spaghetti?
She couldn’t remember and it bothered her. She should have stored away every detail. They’d all been there. They’d all been happy.
How on earth had she not seen what she had when she had it?
Now that she didn’t, she recognized her loss, but didn’t know how to get it back.
What would she be without them?
The question nagged at her, but no answer came.
She wanted to go after Brian and ask him if he remembered that night.
She might not remember what they’d eaten, but she did recall thinking that if she’d lost her family, she’d lose herself. But Brian and Livie were both still here. It was Hayden who felt lost.
Would she lose her family because of it?